8/28/06

there is this thesis floating about me.

it has to do with how we bump and scratch all of these people as we move through life. we learn things through them, we pick up new obsessions and tics and appreciations. each one is sort of leaving a post-it note on us as we pass through, most of these post-its come with both dark and light experiences and loves. but we bring every piece of this patchwork quilt with us each time we jump into another person. and even when we don’t jump, we just sort of move and separate next to them, we are still carrying these pieces. 

i feel like i could draw up an intricate map connecting things like the coltrane music gordon taught me to love and the night i found myself craving every inch of your body when you played that live coltrane record in the dark of your room. or how sean made me appreciate jimi hendrix when i was sending him postcards in high school from the rock and roll hall of fame and this weekend, while thumbing through your music collection, i found a “new” hendrix song i love so much i went through repeated inner meltings for quite a bit of an afternoon. there’s also the story of how the first musical i ever saw became the first musical i ever performed in, and how somehow last week sean found himself in the house in san francisco my rose used to live in… regardless of the fact that they have never met and barely heard of each other.

it’s these scraps, these puzzle pieces that i’m picking up like magnets as i walk through life. they’re filling up my edges and, in a way, making me whole. 

and on the other second hand, i feel the need to say how much i love it when a) i feel like i know myself better than i ever have and b) i am going places and doing things and seeing things on sometimes an everyday basis that are everything to do with me, they are the everything i have loved and appreciated since i could open my eyes and take in the world.

they are everything i woke up one day not so very long ago to realize i was missing.

…

also, this.

…

also! i need a place to arrange all of the bits and pieces of words and things like poems i wrote over the years. there is some good shit that i completely forgot about. that i wrote! i wrote that! how… hmm. how should i do this.

these are not resolutions.

and these are not shoulds.

but these are the things i will do more of in my life, i will make a place for these things, carve out a space for them and not worry about all of the other things i always thought i should be doing.

1) stay up late. (yes, you read that right.)

2) play music.

3) make music. but i’m not going to pressure myself to write songs anymore. i just want to make music, whatever that means.

4) listen to more music. more more more more more.

5) walk. walk through my beautiful, dirty, and messy city. unless it’s after 2 a.m. and before 7 a.m. (i’ve thought this through.)

6) make pictures. not just make pictures, but take picture making to the next level. find the pictures i want to make, and figure out how to make them. stop taking the picture in my head, where it will fade and leave. make the picture.

7) write.

looking at pictures in the distance

because these pictures are places i am tapping into once again, tapping and tripping and falling and bruising and bumping into these things inside that are emerging and breathing and feeling. and they are so good.

someone is pushing me again. in all of the right directions, in all of the right places. and in turn, i will push myself.

10/23/05

and so later in the conversation she says,
i’m moving to san francisco in january. like clockwork gears rotating into a perfect click there i am, and it has hit, hit hard like bricks and buildings. like sunshine and fog and cigarettes and kisses all come true.

x2

revisiting little rituals
walking around bends
turning corners on the past
and filing away
memories
that haven’t yet
been made

placing gently these layers of
moments over
moments
that once spoke deeply
to the irons and folds
within

i am cautiously
carefully
creating these rituals

cautiously,
carefully pressing deeper
into this weight

cautious, careful
of where it may lead me.

~

you are
haunting me
(just a little bit)

hiding inside my simple
brain and stretching
outside of me
in words
and tangled
memories and
soft thoughts
and funny
smiles

you are laughing
and we are catching each other
across dozens of criss
crossed words
piling up and over the
outside,
lingering against
the night

i have a hunch
you are
something

something extraordinary
and something
finite

something full and
something
fluid

you are just right
and you are
here.

(when i touch you there’s words on your body.)

3/3/06

tittle tattled through a folly
dumped lovingly into your
palm green hands and
shifted vicariously among
streets and vacant lots
bigger than us
and wider than the city

walked harmoniously through
slick beaten rain and
washed shores above
rain coats and waving patterns of
wind, i think

i may have ended abruptly
used my words to a wounded
disadvantage and
blazed through your triumphant
abandonment of me
in fields of thick
strings and taut bulbs

this is the place where
elements of nauseating
uncertainty fold
larger states erupt
time moves faster than
clocks and
i am no longer sure of
my awkward steps

DON’T BE AFRAID TO WRITE.

DON’T.

JUST. DO. IT.